“Can I offer you a glass of pam wine?”
“I beg your pardon, I didn’t quite catch....”
“Will you take a glass of pam wine?”
I said, “I don’t quite know what you mean.”
“You don’t know pam wine? It is the sap of the pam tree; the natives bring it round to sell. It is very refreshing.”
He meant that horrible emetic known as palm wine, and I declined with thanks.
The subjects of this monarch said that he kept no servants, and made a police orderly do all the housework. I saw nobody at all. They added that he gave a small dinner once a quarter, and that everybody ate a good square meal before going to it, because they knew that they would not get enough to satisfy hunger at his table. All these West African Governors neglect their duty in the matter of entertaining, though they receive a special table allowance of £500 a year for that purpose. A circular from the Colonial Office pointing out that that money is intended for entertainment, and not for the defraying of ordinary household expenses, would not be out of place.
The Gambia boasts of a local corps of militia. It is not often called out, principally because there is no particular uniform for it, no officers, except two unmilitary Colonial officials, and no arms, except old trade muskets, for the men. As the latter are mostly decrepid old pensioners and discharged men, all Africans, from the disbanded West India regiments, it is not a very formidable body. It is a curious fact that Africans cannot, as a rule, be taught to shoot straight: the practice of the Houssa Constabulary on the Gold Coast is deplorable, and it is well known that it is the bad shooting of the few Africans who still remain in the existing West Indian Regiments that pulls down the figure of merit in those corps. There is no such difficulty with West Indian negroes, for the average recruit from the West Indies is as good a shot as the British recruit, and this almost seems to show that a certain amount of cultivation and civilisation is necessary for making a marksman. In these days of long-range firing it is fortunate that recruiting in Africa has ceased.
Should any of my readers feel tempted to visit the Gambia, I believe that they would find a hitherto unopened field for sport at the upper waters of that river. Certain it is that elephants abound some distance above the falls of Barraconda, the river is full of hippopotami and crocodiles; while leopards, hyænas, antelopes, and civet-cats are easily found, by any one who knows how and where to look, in the vicinity of Bathurst itself. Of the feathered tribes, quail, curlew, snipe, duck, and the usual varieties of cranes and parrots, are common; while the valuable marabout bird and the ostrich are frequently bagged by the badly-armed and worse-shooting Mandingos and Jolloffs.